Masterclass

Online academy taught by world-renowned experts

The Masterclass Challenge

After a successful partnership on ConsultingMD (now Grand Rounds) David Rogier has teamed up again with Carbon Five to create his latest vision. The goal? Create a new segment in the online learning space: lessons by superstars for amateurs.

Rogier first validated the idea using a rapid series of customer acquisition experiments, then came to Carbon Five for help designing, building and testing the first version of the platform (code-named Accomplice).

The Process

Knowing that most products pivot on their way to the market, we mapped out the customer experience, planned two short releases, then hit the ground running.

The initial release needed to do two things: be a production-ready application we could use to acquire paying customers, and be a compelling experience to attract celebrities to participate as teachers. Luckily, Rogier and his creative team are ruthless prioritizers.

We rapidly pieced together some initial branding, visual language and began building out the feature set. In addition to building the first version of core platform features, we also implemented a split testing framework using a low-level integration of Optimizely.

The Results

After the initial 4-week release, a second 4-week pivot and polish phase firmed up the product and helped identify the next business components to address. After months of hard work, including tons of new features and a new brand and visual design by the Masterclass team, the platform officially launched with an unbelievable lineup of classes, including James Patterson, Dustin Hoffman and Serena Williams.

“Super high quality, incredibly easy to work with, and they really care about the product.”
David RogierFounder & CEO, Masterclass